#825 Overly elaborate office pools

You just filled in a little piece of scrap paper, paid Alec five bucks, and then whoever got the most picks right took home the big $25 pot. Then maybe they celebrated by buying a whole pizza or pre-paying the next five pools or something.

Anyway, when Alec moved away, I started up my own Oscar Pool to fill the void. First it was on paper, then in Microsoft Excel, and then last year my friend Chad took the whole thing online with live tracking during the actual Oscars. (You should enter. It’s open to anyone and none of us actually know anything.)

But yeah, honestly, isn’t it all about that one guy at the office or girl in the classroom who takes the pool way too seriously? You know who they are because they’re drawing out March Madness brackets with odds written in and researching Survivorcast members on the Internet so everyone can guess who’s gonna get the raft next. Sometimes they even start pools about when the pregnant lady is gonna give birth or when the guy who sleeps in the bathroom stall will get fired.

Either way, that Pool Guy or Pool Girl is putting in their blood, skin, and sweat so we can all enjoy some friendly gambling. They’re programming Excel macros, photocopying entry forms, and cornering you in the elevator for your ten bucks because they love you lots.

So if you’re lucky enough to have a Pool Guy or Pool Girl in your life, today’s the day to stand up and throw them a sturdy smile, firm handshake, and a quiet, respectful nod.

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16 thoughts on “#825 Overly elaborate office pools”

A friend of mine went through this last year with Total Drama Island, of all things. We live in America™, where we got the show a good 6 months after Canada ended it, but the betters were relatively spoiler-free. He told me the excited reaction of the guy who bet on Owen, who happened to be his job’s The Guy Who Succumbed to Peer Pressure. He also told me that now they’re taking bets for Total Drama Action. I told him only a sucker would bet on Heather (yes, someone did).

i knew owen was going to win because in the first commercial, they talk about the money, list a few “he could win, she could win…” things and they said “he wont win” to owen.reverse psychology FOR TEH WIN

as this realization dawns on me, i think i feel more shame than pride. and also that i have to hurry up and tabulate the results from last nights survivor episode so that the updated spreadsheet can be distributed.

You’ve just described my brother perfectly. You need a stats degree to participate in his pools and they get more complicated by the year. His obsession with “perfecting the pool” is funny on it’s own, but made funnier by three inevitable results:
1. the apocalyptic fights it causes between participants who think they know the rules but don’t.
2. the fact that each year someone figures they’ve found a “hole” in my brother’s system that they will expose all the way to victory (which has never been the case).
3. the amount of frustration that 1 and 2 cause my brother, leading him to introduce new rules and new levels of complication to subsequent pools.

I run the PowerBall pool, and yes, we rarely win anything substantial. There are 15 of us in the pool, and we play both weekly drawings. In 12 years we have won $100 on three occasions. Our winnings average $.08 (that’s 8 cents) on the dollar, but that’s not why we play. We play to keep the dream alive. If we win, everything changes. If we don’t, it’s only $20 every 10 weeks. Like Neil mentioned above, I have the Excel macros and everything to keep track of things, but mostly it’s remembering to collect money and buy new tickets every four months.

On my 19th. birthday, and the pool that followed, I won both and I was swimming in about $200 both times. This kind of cash went a long ways in those days and I will always remember the good times being awesome!